Spike Lee Says Mitt Romney’s Religion May Affect Election Outcome

The public won’t know the result of the 2012 presidential election until November, but Spike Lee already has an idea of who will win—and it’s likely not Mitt Romney. Lee, a longtime supporter of President Obama, said in an interview with Vulturethat while the race will be close, the end result will come down to religion. “I think there will be a block of people saying, ‘I cannot vote for a Mormon,’” he said. “They got a tough decision: Obama or a Mormon. Their beliefs got them between a rock and a hard place.”

Lee also predicted that the race will get “nasty,” and will be “very, very close,” but said that voters will have to ask themselves the question “Am I better now than I was before?” and given the disappointing job report released Friday (July 6), the answer may not be in the president’s favor. Following the report President Obama addressed the nation, stating that the country is moving “in the right direction.” Regardless of the outcome of the election, the 55-year-old doesn’t believe that the country will vote for another Black president anytime soon. “I will be dead before it happens,” he said.

A noted Brooklyn native, the director, whose film Red Hook Summer hits theaters next month also spoke on the changes that have occurred in New York over the years. In the film, about a boy who moves from Atlanta to live with his grandfather in Brooklyn, Lee’s iconic Do the Right Thing character, Mookie, makes an appearance. However, in the 20 plus years since Mookie and his friends depicted the racial tensions of 1980s Brooklyn, the climate has shifted. “It’s so different,” Lee continued. “But it’s all different. There’s gentrification of Cobble Hill. Fort Greene’s gentrified, Harlem was gentrified, Bed-Stuy’s gentrified, and Williamsburg is gentrified.

“People lived on the Lower East Side and got priced out of there. Then you moved to Williamsburg—oh, it became too hip. Now they are going to Bushwick. What is going to happen to Bushwick? Next thing, after Coney Island, there is the Atlantic Ocean.”